sed & awk (2nd Edition)

Learning the Korn Shell (2nd Edition)

The New KornShell Command And Programming Language (2nd Edition)

Perl Core Language Little Black Book, Second Edition

Unix in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference for SVR4 and Solaris 7 (3rd Edition)

Shell

KornShell Programming Tutorial (Hewlett-Packard Press Series)

Format: Paperback
Author: Barry Rosenberg
ReleaseDate: 01 July, 1991
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Rating:

An OK book in a very poorly covered field
It is a *workable* treatment of KornShell 88 in a field of also-rans. I generally agree with the reviewer who expressed amazement at the almost universal acclaim for this book. Given that few if any books are better, I give it three stars because with little else available, you *can* use this book to learn and deal with KornShell 88.

Is it a great book, as so many reviewers claim? By no means. It has a fair organization into functional groupings of KornShell features, but lacks fully expository examples, lacks explanation of some key language features, and no doubt lacks some of the details of the language, as the language appears to be fully documented *nowhere* on this planet. If you scour the "tips" websites you will find crucial things that are absent from this book.

Yes, I use it. Yes, it is dog-eared. But it is one of those books that is maddening in its ability to hide factoids one *knows* one has seen somewhere in the book at some time in the past. It is precisely in those cases that the index falls down, yet that is also precisely why an index should be exhaustive and not spotty.

The examples are typically weak in that they don't always fully showcase the language features they purport to illustrate, instead showing simple cases that don't answer the great pressing questions of how the more complex features are used. A book of this type can succeed on examples alone, but this one doesn't.

For some reason that isn't clear to me, both KornShell and AIX are very poorly documented in the private press, as if few people used them. It's another of the many "What's wrong with this picture?" situations that afflict the unix world.

I also found the folksy style to be a bit nauseating.

A quickstart for shell programming beginners
In less than five minutes I was able to do some practical operations with the knowledge contained in this book. This book is amazing. I am about to participate in a two-day UNIX shell programming class and I am happy to write that this is a great way to step into the training room with some basic knowledge of basic UNIX Korn shell scripting. I highly recommend this book for beginners.

Practical!
The book is organized in a way that you do NOT have to read the whole book to use Korn Shell. No theory, no stories, the author lets you work hands on in Korn shell. There are practical examples that explain every little thing you might want to do with the Korn shell. This was extremely useful for me since I am a developer who has to write programs on demand and I do not have the time to read theories or stories. This book is very highly recommended!.